This community has had an impact (in my view) across the Linux world. I am not going to suggest that the Linux world has copied what we've done, but, I'm sure many in this community haven't noticed the number of Linux distros which now ship full PAE enabled distros for use on 32bit platforms.

PAE is a technology that was instituted by the hardware (h/w) vendors to address a rising need to meet Moore's law about OS, application, and subsystem futures. At that time, 1994, development of 64bit systems was in its infancy and was not projected to meet the demands of the business, government, or education community. What PAE really does is to allow 32bit system to provide access up to 64GB of RAM to the OS. It began arriving into 32bit PCs in 1995.

Next, it was a couple years gone by when the OSes began being constructed to take advantage of all RAM that could be crammed into PCs and servers. Unix, Windows, OS2 and then Linux began provisions to use all RAM it would see in any 32bit PC.

15 years went by, when a little over a year ago in this forum, this community
was asked to look at a phenomenon where a member could not access all the RAM on his PC, even though, Windows was able to use all the RAM. In doing so, it was discovered by the community that a kernel feature was missing, and as such, enabling it to allow Puppy Linux to access and use all of the RAM on the PC.
This community is responsible for

problem discovery

investigation

building a demo distro platform

development of PAE kernels and a generally available distros

@BarryK and distro builder who have already embraced it have done so for 3 basic reasons:

Hardware

All PCs build since 2006 have more than enough RAM to accomodate a PAE Linux. Most all members in the Puppy community have such. And, most of these PCs have 32bit CPU h/w that is built with the PAE feature. (There are a small number of PCs which do not have the PAE feature.)

Measurement Observations and Reports

The community testing showed no negative performance impact in using a PAE kernel. Many testing members reported unexpected performance increase.

Future Distro Protection

No matter how much RAM the PC owner adds to his system, PAE Puppy Linux will not have to be change the distro or its features to use all RAM it finds in the system. (32bit PCs without PAE CANNOT make use of these any RAM above 4GB, and thus, are limited in this way. There are no OS available today that have technology for non_PAE PCs with loads of RAM.)

Puppy Linux was NOT the leader in exploiting this technology....BUT, if you haven't notice, at least 10 major Linux distros in the last 8 months now have PAE versions available for 32bit operations. They, too, have recognized that many in the world have simply added RAM to their PCs. So, they, too, like Puppy developers, have adapted to allow its membership to make use of ALL RAM for their distro's use.

If Puppy want to increase its leadership as a desktop subsystem, it must make some minor necessary changes to become the Linux contender of choice. And to preface this "It does NOT lie in its ability to download packages for non-experience users to modify." It lies in its ability to produce OOTB experiences where most subsystem are present as a beginning PC experience. And, PUPPY MUST change its view from one that see itself as one who selfishly takes from its LAN surroundings to one which fully participates in its LAN surrounding in the same manner as most all of the other desktop systems do.

For starters, over 99% of ALL LANs in the world have SMB PCs and devices on its LAN. These devices come already designed to fully share stuff on the LAN. But, until May 2012, there was NOT one 32bit Puppy distro that comes OOTB with full sharing capability. (In fact, I remember some one of our community attempting to make fun of that 32bit distro developer for doing so.) It is the ONLY Puppy distro (thanks to its developer) that has taken a piercing look at OSX and Microsoft and produced a Puppy that does most everything that those OSes do...."Share" and have a creditable Office packaging. His distro has SAMBA built-in, OOTB. Puppy 2 64bit distros already do this.

But, just as it took a little while for Puppy to take advantage of PAE, it may take a little while, as well, for the development community to embrace SAMBA. SAMBA does not slow a system's performance, while adding a feature that almost all Microsoft users have come to expect. Sharing changes Puppy from a selfish user taking the best of what the LAN has to offer and instead, it becomes a participant along with everyone else on the LAN.

We, in this community, should NOT expect that new users will come to this community with Linux understanding, not Linux development experience, nor Puppy packaging understanding, nor Puppy problem resolution experience when problems arise from incorrectly adding packages. No user should turn away because of a short-sighted Linux experience when they start with Puppy. And, since Puppy is a LAN system, it should be or it should become a full LAN participant on the LAN, same as all other devices and systems on the LAN without some "new/dumb" user trying to understand what's wrong.

Thus far, there are 3 Puppy distros that provide the closest thing to that leadership we need. They are

LightHouse64 - this modern 64bit distro comes in two editions: BASE/Mariner

FATSlacko - this distro is a full featured 32bit PUP that embraces ALN sharing

FATDog - another 64bit distro

Each of these produce OOTB models of what a full LAN participate has, in all of todays LAN.

On this LAN subject, heres a bit of history: LANs began, so to speak, in 1985 when some of the earliest products began to surface as an add-on. It took until 1995 (Windows95) when an OS had LAN technology built-in using an international standard, SMB. Note: this was the same year as PAE started. It is now 2012 and we have our first 32bit Puppy, FATSlacko, that comes with SAMBA and PAE built-in. No Puppy user should have to think about these features in his/her PUPs.

I can only hope that more and more of this community's developers will produce PUPs where no-one has to think twice about whether the distro is a full-participant on their LAN....no-one!

Its our job in this community to assist and describe beneficial uses of Puppy. If anyone has purchased a modern PC or Xtablet or Xphone, they ALL come LAN aware n both h/w and OS. So should Puppy....without a 2nd thought!

Our community leader(s) needs to expand Puppy's view, "a wee bit" to incorporate full LAN sharing in a way that is a consistent model with other PCs and devices found on today's LAN.

01Micko and TaZoC have each produced visionary products that we can all touch and evaluate for how they make easy the PC's ability to fully participate with ALL of your LAN's devices. In fact, 01Micko's FATSlacko makes sharing so obvious that no user gets confused when he initially goes to share.

Maybe the rest of our distro developers, both 32bit and 64bit, can review their accomplishments and how they easily connect and share on your LAN. Then, bring to the table additional full LAN participant Puppy distro systems that no user must think about when wanting to share something from the distro PC with others on the LAN.

And, don't be fooled by arguments that somehow having this either carries negative security implications or negative performance impact. SAMBA was built by another Australian, Andrew Tridgell, in 1992 in "lock-step" with Linus Tovalds. And the open-source SAMBA subsystem has continued to be actively developed and supported across the world by its many members who have integrated Linux into our LANs via their distros. It continues, today, to include the additions that the international standards body for SMB have advanced; namely now SMB2.

The hardware vendors produced a 1999 PC model which indicated LAN on the Motherboard of all PCs sold from 2000 on. Thus for the past 12 years, this is NOT a nice to have subsystem, it is one which allows your Linux to participate fully on the LAN with all Microsoft and Apple PCs.

In 2012 and beyond, we should be doing everything we can to make any user who comes to Puppyland to have no reason whatsoever to want to leave the Dog-Pound.

I love Puppy Linux and I want to see all of us insure its survival and expansion.

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Hi gcmartin !
I like your comment .
Confessions of a LINU (Puppy) holic .
I am (was ) just a linux newbee, disgusted by Microsofts Cabal Matrix controlled enslaving spying torturing digital FEMACAMP ,looking for freedom in linuxworld, unknown territory to me.
quite confusing in the beginning. Somehow i stumbled across Puppy Linux attracted by its small size . I really did not know what it means " running in Ram...Swapfile... copy to ram..
CPU scaling ..burning isos .. installing to USB ..Frugal install ....things like this . In the beginning start playing round with Puppy 3.somewhat burnt to rewritable DVD
with Savefile .Unfortunately it could not find my wireless .So my Linux pilgrimage went on .I forgot about Puppy . later i tried again and wireless worked .
It was the beginning of a real deep friendship not to say i fell in love with Puppy. ( Dont be afraid ..i am not intending to post my whole biography here ( maybe later!) .) to make it short.From day to day
my love for the Puppyproject and the community grows more and more .Everyday going to the forum finding everytime exciting news or programms or projects , friendly support from realy sophisticated ,creative and helpful people from all over the world .A lot of clever and nice guys here to meet. I dont want to disgrace others distros there is a lot creative work going on
The whole puppy concept ( from my intuition i am no Linuxgeek ) seems to me the right track.I hope a lot more people will discover Puppyland .(dont want to establish " THE CHURCH OF PUPPY LINUX") . Can Puppy "really" become the most mainstream Linux distro?
Dont let us fight Microsoft just getting better . CAN Puppy "really" become the most mainstream Linux distro?
To make it short .Puppy in future will be , if not the most mainstream linux distro , but more and more important ( a real small but a big player ) .All the good things are simple and easy ,and thats what Puppy is . In my humble opinion ,it seems really becoming a success story .Day by day Puppy is getting better and better .
Want to thank all people who are involved in Puppy ,in Linux and " to make the world a better place " .
Cheers!!

really great post - I too am blown away by the abilities of the contributors and really thankful fo BK (kneels......) for bring puppy to the world

I am now completely a puppy distro home, mainly slacko (nice one 01micko) but non-pae as it didn't seem as stable for me for some reason

my main machine is a lenovo t61, desktop amd939 that I use to store my collection of puppy os's (266 and climbing), two ibm t21's as thin clients that I use as music servers and an eeepc (fantastic) that runs jemimahs amazing puppee

I have been able to spread the 'word of puppy' to the family having bought my kids and parents eee's with puppeee builds

@backi

I still consider myself a newbie but have managed to link al my machines across lan (although ssh still escapes me?) and although I have tried 'main stream' distros they offer nothing better than puppy and often have stuff missing that I want to use

zigberts pburn was the tipping point, I just couldn't live without it!!!

to all the contributors a big thankyou

ally

ps - anyone puppy masters near to lincoln UK who would like a puppy apprentice please get in touch as I wanna learn more.............

New technology takes along time to take off as IT stuff is mass produced to reduce its price point and are made for only the most popular OSes to ensure sales.

Even Apple or Mac or whatever they call themselves had to produce its own hardware to run its OS.

Android has been accepted by many internet device/ mobile phone/ tablet developers.

Ubuntu is the most popular Linux and some manufacturers support this and you can order their laptops/ desktops to be preloaded with it but when a free OS gets this big, its forced to remove all codecs that arent really free.

Basicly if Puppy as as popular as Ubuntu, you would have to deal with a Puppy that had no codecs installed, it would be unable to play dvds, play mp3s, or mp4s... pretty much not be able to handle any media other than .wav, even flash is non free and this means you cant watch youtube.

If Puppy was this popular you would not have an out of the box experience worth a damn. Even drivers like printer drivers and sound/ video drivers etc would come under scrutiny.

Even the Raspian for the Rasp Pi has all the useful codecs removed but you can purchase for a small fee the mpeg codecs from a 3rd party site. This happens because the Rasp and therefore its default most popular OS became popular.

If Puppy became popular you would have to add the codecs manually like Ubuntu needs to or you would have to pay for Puppy and so the companies who license out the codecs get their cut of the action. Granted this would only be $10 or so in codecs but to actually do this, Puppy would need to be sold on a decent E-Commerce site and you would pay for shipping, the cost of the disk and the wages of someone to fill orders etc and make sure all the companies get paid and Puppy would probably need to be sold for $15 or so. If Puppy was licensed to be installed as a default OS on cheap Intel x86 based hardware, then someone must oversee this and make sure that money is collected and then shuffled off to the companies that supply the non free drivers and codecs.

All in all if Puppy was popular then the only advantage it would offer over Ubuntu is that is would use a little less RAM and have a smaller disk footprint.

Ubuntu is large enough and i mean as in corporation, its established to handle all of the things that a popular OS must do in the background. Its hard for Puppy to become this and become it in such a way that it would give the established corporation a run for its money. And money would have to eventually come into it.

Soon enough Barry would be despised just like Gates and Jobs and whoever runs Ubuntu... small time Linux OS developers would hate Puppy just like many in the Puppy community right now hate the commercialized and established free but not really free larger Linux distro and or Android and or Mac OSX and or Windows.

Please people, think about what you are saying. We are only free to do what we like with software as long as we are a small group. Even middle sized small OS developers are eventually told by government agencies to include a backdoor in their OS. Even reasonably popular applications like skype and yes, even TOR have back doors inbuilt to allow easy access for government agencies. Its a federal offense for popular communications devices to not have a hardware backdoor, and also for popular communications related software not to have a software backdoor. Every moden PC that uses skype and facebook and MSN and Mozilla based browsers have multiple backdoors running all the time. If Puppy became this popular it would have to include such things. Altho the Linux kernel already has this, i dont know if its able to be circumvented by editing and compiling your own.

Read the TOR documentation yourself, they says that the government checks up on them regularly and there is the possibility of a backdoor being established, but if and or when it is, they cannot tell you as that is an offense.

This is the kind of crap that popular software needs to go through even if its free.

IF Puppy was popular you may as well grab it by its leash and shoot it in the head.

This community has had an impact (in my view) across the Linux world. I am not going to suggest that the Linux world has copied what we've done, but, I'm sure many in this community haven't noticed the number of Linux distros which now ship full PAE enabled distros for use on 32bit platforms.

PAE is a technology that was instituted by the hardware (h/w) vendors to address a rising need to meet Moore's law about OS, application, and subsystem futures. At that time, 1994, development of 64bit systems was in its infancy and was not projected to meet the demands of the business, government, or education community. What PAE really does is to allow 32bit system to provide access up to 64GB of RAM to the OS. It began arriving into 32bit PCs in 1995.

Next, it was a couple years gone by when the OSes began being constructed to take advantage of all RAM that could be crammed into PCs and servers. Unix, Windows, OS2 and then Linux began provisions to use all RAM it would see in any 32bit PC.

15 years went by, when a little over a year ago in this forum, this community
was asked to look at a phenomenon where a member could not access all the RAM on his PC, even though, Windows was able to use all the RAM. In doing so, it was discovered by the community that a kernel feature was missing, and as such, enabling it to allow Puppy Linux to access and use all of the RAM on the PC.
This community is responsible for

problem discovery

investigation

building a demo distro platform

development of PAE kernels and a generally available distros

@BarryK and distro builder who have already embraced it have done so for 3 basic reasons:

Hardware

All PCs build since 2006 have more than enough RAM to accomodate a PAE Linux. Most all members in the Puppy community have such. And, most of these PCs have 32bit CPU h/w that is built with the PAE feature. (There are a small number of PCs which do not have the PAE feature.)

Measurement Observations and Reports

The community testing showed no negative performance impact in using a PAE kernel. Many testing members reported unexpected performance increase.

Future Distro Protection

No matter how much RAM the PC owner adds to his system, PAE Puppy Linux will not have to be change the distro or its features to use all RAM it finds in the system. (32bit PCs without PAE CANNOT make use of these any RAM above 4GB, and thus, are limited in this way. There are no OS available today that have technology for non_PAE PCs with loads of RAM.)

Puppy Linux was NOT the leader in exploiting this technology....BUT, if you haven't notice, at least 10 major Linux distros in the last 8 months now have PAE versions available for 32bit operations. They, too, have recognized that many in the world have simply added RAM to their PCs. So, they, too, like Puppy developers, have adapted to allow its membership to make use of ALL RAM for their distro's use.

If Puppy want to increase its leadership as a desktop subsystem, it must make some minor necessary changes to become the Linux contender of choice. And to preface this "It does NOT lie in its ability to download packages for non-experience users to modify." It lies in its ability to produce OOTB experiences where most subsystem are present as a beginning PC experience. And, PUPPY MUST change its view from one that see itself as one who selfishly takes from its LAN surroundings to one which fully participates in its LAN surrounding in the same manner as most all of the other desktop systems do.

For starters, over 99% of ALL LANs in the world have SMB PCs and devices on its LAN. These devices come already designed to fully share stuff on the LAN. But, until May 2012, there was NOT one 32bit Puppy distro that comes OOTB with full sharing capability. (In fact, I remember some one of our community attempting to make fun of that 32bit distro developer for doing so.) It is the ONLY Puppy distro (thanks to its developer) that has taken a piercing look at OSX and Microsoft and produced a Puppy that does most everything that those OSes do...."Share" and have a creditable Office packaging. His distro has SAMBA built-in, OOTB. Puppy 2 64bit distros already do this.

But, just as it took a little while for Puppy to take advantage of PAE, it may take a little while, as well, for the development community to embrace SAMBA. SAMBA does not slow a system's performance, while adding a feature that almost all Microsoft users have come to expect. Sharing changes Puppy from a selfish user taking the best of what the LAN has to offer and instead, it becomes a participant along with everyone else on the LAN.

We, in this community, should NOT expect that new users will come to this community with Linux understanding, not Linux development experience, nor Puppy packaging understanding, nor Puppy problem resolution experience when problems arise from incorrectly adding packages. No user should turn away because of a short-sighted Linux experience when they start with Puppy. And, since Puppy is a LAN system, it should be or it should become a full LAN participant on the LAN, same as all other devices and systems on the LAN without some "new/dumb" user trying to understand what's wrong.

Thus far, there are 3 Puppy distros that provide the closest thing to that leadership we need. They are

LightHouse64 - this modern 64bit distro comes in two editions: BASE/Mariner

FATSlacko - this distro is a full featured 32bit PUP that embraces ALN sharing

FATDog - another 64bit distro

Each of these produce OOTB models of what a full LAN participate has, in all of todays LAN.

On this LAN subject, heres a bit of history: LANs began, so to speak, in 1985 when some of the earliest products began to surface as an add-on. It took until 1995 (Windows95) when an OS had LAN technology built-in using an international standard, SMB. Note: this was the same year as PAE started. It is now 2012 and we have our first 32bit Puppy, FATSlacko, that comes with SAMBA and PAE built-in. No Puppy user should have to think about these features in his/her PUPs.

I can only hope that more and more of this community's developers will produce PUPs where no-one has to think twice about whether the distro is a full-participant on their LAN....no-one!

Its our job in this community to assist and describe beneficial uses of Puppy. If anyone has purchased a modern PC or Xtablet or Xphone, they ALL come LAN aware n both h/w and OS. So should Puppy....without a 2nd thought!

Our community leader(s) needs to expand Puppy's view, "a wee bit" to incorporate full LAN sharing in a way that is a consistent model with other PCs and devices found on today's LAN.

01Micko and TaZoC have each produced visionary products that we can all touch and evaluate for how they make easy the PC's ability to fully participate with ALL of your LAN's devices. In fact, 01Micko's FATSlacko makes sharing so obvious that no user gets confused when he initially goes to share.

Maybe the rest of our distro developers, both 32bit and 64bit, can review their accomplishments and how they easily connect and share on your LAN. Then, bring to the table additional full LAN participant Puppy distro systems that no user must think about when wanting to share something from the distro PC with others on the LAN.

And, don't be fooled by arguments that somehow having this either carries negative security implications or negative performance impact. SAMBA was built by another Australian, Andrew Tridgell, in 1992 in "lock-step" with Linus Tovalds. And the open-source SAMBA subsystem has continued to be actively developed and supported across the world by its many members who have integrated Linux into our LANs via their distros. It continues, today, to include the additions that the international standards body for SMB have advanced; namely now SMB2.

The hardware vendors produced a 1999 PC model which indicated LAN on the Motherboard of all PCs sold from 2000 on. Thus for the past 12 years, this is NOT a nice to have subsystem, it is one which allows your Linux to participate fully on the LAN with all Microsoft and Apple PCs.

In 2012 and beyond, we should be doing everything we can to make any user who comes to Puppyland to have no reason whatsoever to want to leave the Dog-Pound.

I love Puppy Linux and I want to see all of us insure its survival and expansion.

Here to help.

i personally see the recent need for PAE enabled kernels due to the fact that 64 bit OS just plain sucks still. There is very little benefit in moving to a 64 bit OS and even if you do find some performance benefit, you introduce alot of software compatibility problems and Linux seems to be the OS that suffers the most as its tricky to setup a kernel to run 32 and 64 bit apps in the same OS without rebooting. WINE is an example of such an incompatibility as its not officially supported to run on 64 bit systems. Windows isnt too much of a problem, altho the benefit is still limited as the majority of programs are still only 32 bit.

The end users and PC manufacturers simply presumed that 64 bit software technology would keep up with 64 bit hardware but it hasnt and many found that their super high amount of RAM in their computer was worthless, and so PAE 32 bit kernels that can use more than 3GB came on to the scene.

Puppy won't ever become the "Most mainstream Linux distro" for many reasons. Some are external to this community, some are internal.

The few problems to this idea as I see it are:

External :

What the hell is Linux? From a public point of view, who knows what Linux even is, let alone Puppy Linux? The Linux ad campaign is pretty poor, probably because it is non-existent. And, Puppy's campaign is again, pretty much non-existent, apart from this forum, some dispersed websites, some youtube videos etc.

Puppy runs as root! We've all seen the arguments. Lets face it, the Linux nerds out there like their multi-user systems. Running as root is dangerous, we've heard it all before. I like root, most of us like root. But, its always going to be a problem for Puppy's perception.

Too much choice. There is simply too much choice in the Linux world. That's why distro hopping happens so much. We've all done it. Its hard to find that perfect distro.

Internal

Too much choice. Just like the massive amount of choice across the broader Linux world, there is such a vast array of choice in Puppy land that it confuses new users.

Too simple. Not simple as in ease of use. Puppy wins hands down against just about anything I've ever used on this one. But, it looks simple. People's expectations are for advanced, shiny, blingy, wobbly things that the main Pups don't offer OOTB. I've seen Puppy criticized many times because it looks too much like Win98 / 95. I know it is this simplicity that helps make Puppy fast and lightweight, but...

Too spread out. The Puppy devs don't often work together on a unified project. Barry makes his Pups. Micko makes his. Playdayz made his. Kirk does his. Jemimah makes hers etc. Independently, each of these, and all of the other devs not mentioned make fantastic work, but, it is so frustrating to see one of them come up with something really cool, and then it not get used in the next Pup by a different dev. There is a general trend, as mentioned by gcmartin, with things like PAE and Samba support to eventually become included, but a lot of little stuff seems to get lost somewhere. Obviously, in a largely community driven organisation such as Puppy's, there isn't the leadership steering toward a common goal. Ubuntu has the lead in userbase because of Canonical. They have a vision that they are constantly working toward, employing / sourcing developers to work on individual parts of the larger product. Puppy, by and large doesn't have this, with some exceptions, probably most notably Zigert's work.

Not enough distinctive, obvious, new innovation. From a user's point of view, Puppy hasn't actually changed a whole lot in its OOTB experience ever since when. For the official Pups, the interface is basically the same as its always been, with a lot of essentially the same programs, albeit updated to later versions. Again, drawing a comparison to Canonical, they have created their own desktop interface, Unity, which nobody likes, but, it's their own.

Constrained by its own goals. Puppy was never meant to be the biggest and best distro. It was meant to offer high speed functionality. It achieves that goal very well. But, you can only fit so much into a 150ish meg ISO. To add functionality, you need to add to that 150meg. I don't like Abiword, so I add LibreOffice, another 150meg, I want to do video editing, so I add Openshot, another 40meg, picture editing, GIMP, etc. Without some of these somewhat basic, Linux standard, tools already included, Puppy misses out when compared to some other, fuller feature, bloated distros.

Frugal vs Full install, and to install at all. The people that use frugall installs, or MultisessionDVD swear by it, and know the benefits. But, to the layperson, they just don't sound right. I don't want a half arsed frugal install, I want the full thing.... Without knowing why a certain type is better, its hard for new users to come to grips with what's going on, and how they should do it.

.....

There are probably many more arguments why Puppy Linux will never be the Most Mainstream Linux Distro, but I really feel like I'm starting to bash this little Puppy. And I don't like doing that. I use 3 different computers around my house regularly, and all 3 use Puppy exclusively. For me, its the only choice.

There are plenty of arguments why people should use Puppy Linux over anything else, Linux or otherwise, but that's a whole other thread.

My summary, I could never see Puppy being the number 1 in the world, but, that can have its own problems. For me, Puppy is number 1 in MY world, and that keeps me happy.Edited_time_total

Macpup is in the top 10 because the gui isn't cluttered with icons,
the default theme is attractive, the defaults are sensible,
and the basic functions work.
E17 is not extremely difficult to master,
if you click the mouse here and there.

For puppy as a whole, a windoze refugee might benefit from
having clear paths to .pet and .sfs files,
and the docs to utilize them.

A better gui to manage repositories, would also be of great benefit.
Package management is to me the weakest link. It works in
most cases. Making it far easier would be nice.

I normally shy away from these threads because they are usually based on some misguided fanaticism of PuppyLinux. However gcmartin has put thought into this and has brought some interesting points to light, so I figured I'd comment.

Can Puppy become the most mainstream distro?

I dont believe it can. Not because I dont feel that puppy is one of the best, but because I see the very nature of puppy to make this not possible.

1) We have no package management. Until this becomes a feature, we will never become a "main" distro. The matter has been addressed by Devs many times, and each time the same fact has emerged... Puppy is too fractured for any single package management system to work properly. Which leads us to #2.

2) Puppy is too fractured. As others have mentioned before, we dont have the same dev structure as most mainstream distros. Each Dev works on their own side project while adding in features and assistance into the official releases. This isnt a bad thing though, in my mind at least, this is one of the best features of PuppyLinux. It's so customizable that it can be whatever a person needs. And you can see by the number of versions out there that those needs and designs are many. Puppy is very easily customizable and re-configurable. Its this very feature that many of us love, that works against PuppyLinux ever becoming as big as or bigger than the likes of Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.

3) The $ issue. The Big distro's have financial backing, and a huge userbase of donations. Puppy on the other hand is more of a hobbist OS. I see this as a hurdle in ever becoming a 'main' distro.

4) Linux is too easy to make now adays. Anyone with basic knowledge of Linux can now create their own distro and release it. I place the blame for this on debian which has spawned a entire generation of 'slightly different distros' If you check on DistroWatch you have 146 versions based on Debian... plus its main offshoot, Ubuntu has spawned a further 88 versions of Ubuntu. If we then count Ubuntu's offshoot, LinuxMint... the number grows even larger.
This versus 13 based on RedHat, and 20 on slackware for contrast.
Alot of people in the IT field have realized that being a 'core developer' on a linux distro looks great on a job resume... and so they get together with some friends and make a few fast edits to debian, ubuntu, etc; remaster, grab a domain name and BAM... They are a core developer.
This is only going to get worse and worse as time goes on. I feel that the divergent nature of this will mean that the only 'main' distros will be the ones that are already in that spot. I dont see a new comer, being able to rise above all the chaff and become the most used. There's simply too much competition. And since Linux is all open source, even if some new distro came up with some amazing new feature... everyone else could copy it and then it wouldnt have any thing special to offer over anyone else.

Dont misunderstand me... I love PuppyLinux. But I just dont see PuppyLinux ever being able to compete with the large distros with the large userbase and $ backing. Puppy is kinda quriky (pun not intended) in how it operates. That quirkyness is one of the things I love about Puppy, and why I was drawn to it. I think PuppyLinux has an awesome niche, and I think we will grow stronger and stronger if we continue to focus on the areas where we can succeed. I think trying to follow the path of 'lets get the most users' will end up resulting in a puppy that is nothing like we currently have and love.

Just my thoughts... interested in everyone eles' views on them.

sickgut wrote:

Every moden PC that uses skype and facebook and MSN and Mozilla based browsers have multiple backdoors running all the time. If Puppy became this popular it would have to include such things. Altho the Linux kernel already has this, i dont know if its able to be circumvented by editing and compiling your own.

I'd love to see something to verify your claims that the linux kernel has a backdoor built into it. If you have something to show that... please post it. Id personally like to look into that._________________

gcmartin are you aware of that last time we had these kind of
discussion threads then puppy forum got into a flame war
that almost made us lose half of all good people and the dust
has not settled yet so why on earth are you wanting to destroy us? _________________I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

Reasons? Though I love working with Puppy, I'll give you two. 1)We are the poster children for fragmentation, and 2)possibly because of reason 1, we have no true "LTS" or Long Term Service release.

It's true that releases like Lucid under Playdayz, and, perhaps, Slacko under 01micko, have become LTS-like, but that is simply because one developer has taken it upon himself to make it so. And there's always BK and Wary.

Me? I'm putting money on 01micko, he's taking classes to become an even better developer, and I just trust the guy, he seems to have a true interest and inherent craftmanship. Outside shot - Jejy69, because he's 18, seems brilliant, and has the time to work on it. Just hope he doesn't suddenly discover girls or Xboxes and leave us high and dry. _________________"Everywhere is within walking distance, if you have the time." - Steven WrightEdited_time_total

The title for this thread contains a question, but the first post contains only a proposal.

To the question, I think we cannot honestly answer with a yes. I follow puppy development since 2.17, and every time I try to propose something to adds structure to puppy development, half of the community starts to kill the other half in endless discussions, that in one case even ended in loosing a wonderful developer (could not cope with the negative comments).

The community is simply not up to it.

But to the proposal .... that is a different matter.

The original puppy was developed as a "stand alone" replacement for windows refugees. But the world has changed.
5 years ago, a simple (wired or wireless) internet connection for a older PC with 256 Mbytes RAM would have been fine for this purpose.

But if you look around you now. Most of the modern households have wired or wireless networks, with networked storage. And the "old PC" of today has 1G RAM, a PAE capable processor. So SAMBA and PAE could be made mainstream features. So the proposal in post #1 is a good one.

And now we come to this, memory sticks are not 128Mbyte anymore. The smallest you can buy in Holland is 4GByte. So why would we try to create a small ISO image ?? Even a 300-400Mbyte image would run fine in RAM of modern "OLD" PC's.

This is something that has to be brought up to a higher level. BK's WOOF system could be changed to free up development for a new kind of PUPPY. Maybe WOOF3 ???

FATSlacko is a good example of what puppy really should strive toward. A decent set of features and programs.

Accept the world has changes, change with it.

Volhout

(And there may still be need for some older smaller versions. It may be worth to keep 2.14x (really old) and WARY (rather old) versions up to date. But mainstream should think ahead.